Matilda

Matilda comes from the Germanic name Mahthild, made from words for might and battle. It passed into Old French as Mathilde and reached England with the Normans, whose queen, Matilda of Flanders, was the wife of William the Conqueror. Maud was the everyday medieval form of the same name.

The best-known royal bearer is the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, who fought her cousin Stephen for the English crown in the twelfth century. Modern readers know the name above all from Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel about a small girl with a big mind, later a film and a stage musical. In Australia, a “matilda” was once slang for the bundle a swagman carried, as in the song “Waltzing Matilda”.

Matilda was very rare in Ireland for decades, given to only a few girls in scattered years. It began to grow in the mid-2000s and had its best year in 2016, with 58 girls and a place at number 97. It has ranked between 106th and 132nd every year since.